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Wouldn’t a minivan be a better option in that case? More passenger room, more cargo area, lower floors with the same high seating, better visibility which seem

Wouldn’t a minivan be a better option in that case? More passenger room, more cargo area, lower floors with the same high seating, better visibility which seems especially important around kids, comes in hybrid and AWD, most can tow the same amount as a hybrid highlander. I own an SUV, and live in a rural area but I find it to be a pretty bad solution for moving stuff and people. I bought it, and use it, mostly for backcountry access along unmaintained resource roads.

Zak 4y ago
Are minivans better for not killing cyclists? They seem like they might be a little bit (bumper height, hood angle), but they're still large, tall vehicles.
- dghlsakjg 4y ago
  One of the biggest pieces of why suvs are more dangerous is the hood height. It’s not a small factor, its the main factor. Minivans will hit you in the lower body or legs, deflecting you up into the sloped surface of the hood. By contrast, most suvs have blunter higher noses, causes the initial point of contact to be in the chest or head area, where injuries tend to be more life threatening, and physics will tend to cause you to topple over onto concrete and under the vehicle. For comparison check out the contrast here https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/chrysler-voyager-2004-minivan-grand-voyager-vs-toyota-highlander-2019-suv/ https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/chrysler-voyager-20... It’s pretty clear that the minivan will contact you significantly lower. If you want something truly scary swap the highlander for a full size SUV like a Yukon
xyzelement 4y ago
I do think minivans are somewhat more convenient but I think the line between a modern minivan and suv is minimal. Example: take a look at the first few seconds of this video [1], can you immediately say which one is the minivan and which is the SUV? [1] https://youtu.be/gtPyH9dB4PI https://youtu.be/gtPyH9dB4PI
- _dain_ 4y ago
  Yes, instantly. Well, not exactly "left is SUV, right is minivan", I don't really pay close attention to nominal categories like that. But certainly I see "left vehicle is more dangerous to me than the right vehicle". When you bike all the time, you learn to make this kind of subconscious snap assessment of what kind of vehicles pose greater risk. And I checked carsized.com for objective comparisons: https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/toyota-highlander-2019-suv-vs-toyota-sienna-2010-minivan/ https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/toyota-highlander-2... The vehicle on the left has a longer and slightly higher bonnet (front hood). The left vehicle's driver-side window is smaller than the right vehicle's. And the A-pillar of the left vehicle is slightly thicker than the one on the right. Meaning at many angles, I'm more likely to be fully or partially occluded for the left driver than for the right. The greater length and height of the SUV bonnet also means the SUV driver can't see things lower down. This hazard has been made infamous by those pictures of long lines of invisible-to-the-driver toddlers. But it's not just a problem of kids playing in driveways; it manifests on roads where there's an elevation change (hills or slopes). The higher bonnet is deadlier in a collision with a cyclist or pedestrian, because you get hit more in the torso than the legs, and you have a bigger chance of being caught under the vehicle rather than sliding over the windshield. Gallery of comparison pictures here: https://imgur.com/a/4ZMU3Ca https://imgur.com/a/4ZMU3Ca (the A-pillar one is harder to measure because to see the real effect you need to be at about a 40 degree angle. also the minivan is slightly closer to the camera in the video) I know these seem like very marginal things (and they are fairly similar vehicles all things considered) but it's all a game of numbers and probabilities. Multiplied over tens of thousands of vehicle interactions, day after day, there will eventually come an unlucky conjunction of circumstances (bad weather, bad road, badly-designed junction, distracted driver) where the minivan driver would see a cyclist and the SUV driver wouldn't. And that can have lethal consequences for the cyclist. And there are SUVs on the roads that are much worse than that Highlander.
  - xyzelement 4y ago
    (I am the person you're responding to) - thank you for that comment, this is by far the most informed/informative comment from the "don't like big cars" crowd I've ever read.

Zak 4y ago

Are minivans better for not killing cyclists? They seem like they might be a little bit (bumper height, hood angle), but they're still large, tall vehicles.

dghlsakjg 4y ago
One of the biggest pieces of why suvs are more dangerous is the hood height. It’s not a small factor, its the main factor. Minivans will hit you in the lower body or legs, deflecting you up into the sloped surface of the hood. By contrast, most suvs have blunter higher noses, causes the initial point of contact to be in the chest or head area, where injuries tend to be more life threatening, and physics will tend to cause you to topple over onto concrete and under the vehicle. For comparison check out the contrast here https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/chrysler-voyager-2004-minivan-grand-voyager-vs-toyota-highlander-2019-suv/ https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/chrysler-voyager-20... It’s pretty clear that the minivan will contact you significantly lower. If you want something truly scary swap the highlander for a full size SUV like a Yukon

xyzelement 4y ago

I do think minivans are somewhat more convenient but I think the line between a modern minivan and suv is minimal. Example: take a look at the first few seconds of this video [1], can you immediately say which one is the minivan and which is the SUV? [1] https://youtu.be/gtPyH9dB4PI https://youtu.be/gtPyH9dB4PI

_dain_ 4y ago
Yes, instantly. Well, not exactly "left is SUV, right is minivan", I don't really pay close attention to nominal categories like that. But certainly I see "left vehicle is more dangerous to me than the right vehicle". When you bike all the time, you learn to make this kind of subconscious snap assessment of what kind of vehicles pose greater risk. And I checked carsized.com for objective comparisons: https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/toyota-highlander-2019-suv-vs-toyota-sienna-2010-minivan/ https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/toyota-highlander-2... The vehicle on the left has a longer and slightly higher bonnet (front hood). The left vehicle's driver-side window is smaller than the right vehicle's. And the A-pillar of the left vehicle is slightly thicker than the one on the right. Meaning at many angles, I'm more likely to be fully or partially occluded for the left driver than for the right. The greater length and height of the SUV bonnet also means the SUV driver can't see things lower down. This hazard has been made infamous by those pictures of long lines of invisible-to-the-driver toddlers. But it's not just a problem of kids playing in driveways; it manifests on roads where there's an elevation change (hills or slopes). The higher bonnet is deadlier in a collision with a cyclist or pedestrian, because you get hit more in the torso than the legs, and you have a bigger chance of being caught under the vehicle rather than sliding over the windshield. Gallery of comparison pictures here: https://imgur.com/a/4ZMU3Ca https://imgur.com/a/4ZMU3Ca (the A-pillar one is harder to measure because to see the real effect you need to be at about a 40 degree angle. also the minivan is slightly closer to the camera in the video) I know these seem like very marginal things (and they are fairly similar vehicles all things considered) but it's all a game of numbers and probabilities. Multiplied over tens of thousands of vehicle interactions, day after day, there will eventually come an unlucky conjunction of circumstances (bad weather, bad road, badly-designed junction, distracted driver) where the minivan driver would see a cyclist and the SUV driver wouldn't. And that can have lethal consequences for the cyclist. And there are SUVs on the roads that are much worse than that Highlander.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  (I am the person you're responding to) - thank you for that comment, this is by far the most informed/informative comment from the "don't like big cars" crowd I've ever read.